Archive for February, 2012

Jurgen bey one of the founder of Makkink and Bey Design studio,graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven and now the director of Sandberg Institute, starts designing from how a person thinks, feels and works. From there he goes and scales up things.

He starts from humans and thats where i feel connected with him and his designs. He works very intuitional. It is not about organizing things and creating solutions. Every disorganization has a specific organization, and the specifics are what interests him.He thinks we should be more specific on what we organize.

It is not about mapping everything and understanding everything and then designing it, for him its about following an intuition and questioning why things are the way they are and let that lead to somewhere where he has not been before.

According to him wanting to think or create something new is bizarre for everything or solution we can possibly dream of does already exist in the world around us. The language is already familiar, When we see things we already recognize. So it is about knowing that language and translating it our way.

Jurgen Bey is aware of the different areas he can dive in to as a designer. He is interested in the context of his designs where usually most designers avoid.

Designing a space so to say instead of the building itself is what Jurgen Bey is interested in. As soon as he touches a space with his things, he owns the space, as he says.

For him its always about being in a specific situation. He designs for specific situations instead of abstract.

Jurgen Bey emphasizes on model world because you have the liberty to do things you want in a model world without being distracted by the questions of reality. It is important to live isolated for a while. You could reach places you haven’t reached before and you become special when you get back to reality. You face the questions of reality when you reach the level you know why you do these things.

He thinks of dutch design as a historical driven design where the craftsmanship matters and is valued. He is fascinated by the future driven design like in the 50s, or now in China where he feels the progress. Its interesting to be completely free from the history and that you are allowed to think completely ahead.

Now designers are interested in making their own machines which can result in factories becoming smaller. You can get products made on demand. For Jurgen Bey its very interesting to watch how the industry will change and the effects it will have on the people and the city.

The whole discipline is growing so fast. The change is fast. He sees the whole discipline as a sort of olympics where you can choose your own discipline and focus. You cannot do everything well, He does not believe in multidisciplinary designers.

Industrial design is not about the product but more about how things are made. How the factory would look like how would you go to the factory, how would you work there.

Jurgen Bey creates designs that provokes thinking and discussion.

Jurgen Bey considers himself to be a product designer but i really see him on the line between art and design. This is also where i would like to be, somewhere on the line. Playing with the context and the reality.For me it is not about creating beautiful products that people would like to buy for their houses. It is also not about making money but more about the social context my designs will have in the society. How will they change or adapt to people? It is not something to be planned, but more like a progress that is waiting to be unfolded.

Considering Jurgen Beys description of dutch design, ironically i see myself as a dutch designer even though i am not dutch. I value the history and the craftsmanship. I value the individuality of pieces and am not much into mass production. I don’t think that design is for everybody. I am sure not everybody would like my designs and that is ok. It should be only for the ones who would cherish them.

In the fashion industry the topic of sustainability and eco-friendliness has not been on the top of the priority list one might say. Trends change every season, and to stay in style you are expected to renew your wardrobe at least twice per year. High-end designers are now launching even more than two collections a year, you have the so-called pre-fall and resort collections as well as the biannual summer and winter. Chain stores are introducing new collections as often as every six weeks. At the same time as this is happening, fashion is getting cheaper and cheaper. The high-street brands keep pushing prices lower by producing their clothes in countries that are known for using child labor and having extremely poor working conditions. The materials used are usually of very bad quality, which is probably also produced in an unethical way. So with facts like these you don’t have to be the sharpest tool in the shed to see that this is not a very sustainable approach

“Good design should be innovative

Good design should be useful

Good design is aesthetic

Good design is understandable

Good design is honest

Good design is unobtrusive

Good design is long lived

Good design is consistent in every detail

Good design is environmentally friendly and as little design a possible.”

Dieter Rams

I used these premises to give structure to my research about “New Energy in Design” because I think it defines what the attempts are behind designing and what more or less designers are trying to achieve in actuality. It is becoming harder to pinpoint what is design and what is not. When I say “ contemporary design” I mean all which design is surprisingly turning out to be : from sketches to little tryouts, researches that can surprisingly redefine your idea about design.

When you design you are not only making an object that could function in a situational context. It’s about giving meaning and making an identity for the object and the situation it will serve. Nevertheless, functionality plays a big role because initially as a designer you are trying to come up with a solution. A solution for a problem should always be on top of the head of a designer. But besides solving a problem there’s also a big amount of values being transmitted from the designers character to the end result. You project all the perks and peculiarities that was found in the making. You add important characteristics that will come to identify you, and the connections you made through the research.
Being a designer is really about having a set of creative paradigms and externalizing a generated map of routes that will lead you to a product, or to a stable outcome (for the time being).

At least that is what I gathered after visiting the Boijmans Museum.

I bumped into works that are surprisingly “Design” because they still whirl in between design and something less concrete: ”design-ish” if I shall put it that way. A very perfect example of what I mean is Debug, a work by a design firm in Eindhoven called EdHv.
Edhv retrieved the idea of mapping a route when they first started on a design project for a restaurant menu. Remco who is the founder of EdHv decided to create the restaurants identity based on the routes they take while they operate in the kitchen. Which is a clever solution if you ask me. Because what are we but pattern seeking creatures. The remarkable work I bumped in is just a small model of a chair and could be categorized as an architectural piece, product or even an identity for the project which is still ongoing.

Debug gives us a new way of approaching space, a new angle, a new perspective but on a whole different dimension, insect proportions. It kicked off when The EdHv crew started monitoring/tracking the movement of different insects on a model cast for a poster. A poster model generating 300 posters and counting. Every one of them is unique. Some posters are made by woodlice, some of them by house crickets. Tracking software and scripting, maps the walking patterns of these little creatures. The complexity of movement leads to stunning results.

click on image to see "Debug : Art by insects" a video made by edhv.nl